Legion of Honor

This guide to the Legion of Honor in San Francisco follows Alma de Bretteville, a poor immigrant's daughter said to have modeled for a bronze goddess now watching over Union Square, and Adolph Spreckels, the sugar heir who married her after a courtship that scandalized polite society. It traces her stand at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition, where she refused to let a replica French mansion be torn down, and the years she spent talking Adolph into rebuilding it permanently on the bluffs above the Golden Gate. Two French war heroes, Marshal Foch and Marshal Joffre, each visited the empty site during the years the project stalled, and planted a tree there.